What are We Reading Today?

I recently read a blog posting by Gary Anderson, "What Students Read When They Can Read Anything" and I eagerly read through the list to find new titles. That's what readers do -- look for that next book, and the one after that.

I knew I wanted to have my students list their current books, and a perfect opportunity arose when my friend and fellow Oklahoma Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Jason Stephenson, visited our class last week. I wanted Jason to have a souvenir of our visit, and I wanted my students to feel likethey were contributing to his visit.

So, we started a "Today I'm Reading" list first hour, and students contributed to it all day. I know we didn't catch everyone, but this is a very typical representation of what happens in my classroom.

My students have complete free choice with their books. They can choose to read above or below grade level (whatever that means). They can reread favorites, they can read books they've been assigned in other classes. They can read fiction or nonfiction. Memoir, science-fiction, romance, young adult literature. The only catch is, they must read books. Magazines will not build the stamina needed in college, or on all those tests kids are subjected to. Books...with lots of opportunity to build comprehension, make adjustments, activate prior learning. Books.

Then we turn on the music, we get comfortable, and we read.

When I talk to skeptics about my class one question always comes up. Sadly, it reflects a lack of respect for students and their abilities as readers: "Well, if you let them read whatever they want, won't they read trash?" Meaning "Won't they avoid any challenge? Won't they pretend to read like they've pretended for their entire school career? How can we trust high school students to read well if we let them choose?"

Well -- here's what my students were reading on Thursday, April 25. 2013:

1st Hour Eclipse The Inferno American Psycho The Time Traveler’s Wife The Perks of Being a Wallflower The Lovely Bones The Dark Between The Glass Castle Fellowship of the Rings Looking for Alaska Playing for Pizza Crazy Love Life as We Knew it Water for Elephants Clockwork Angel Deadline Mockingjay The Storyteller One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Renegade Beneath the Lion’s Gaze Thirteen Reasons Why Keeping Faith Deathless The Crazy Horse Electric Game Pet Sematary 2nd Hour A Monster Calls

Stardust

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Shattering Glass

Everwild

The Great Gatsby

Beautiful Chaos

Beauty Queens

Demian

Period.8

Maximum Ride

Everfound

Eat Pray Love

Seeing Redd

Unwind

Top Dog

Freaks Like Us

Impossible

1984

Shogun

Game

Mockingjay

I am the Messenger

Soul Screamers Vol. 2

World War Z

Inheritance

My Sister’s Keeper

4th Hour

The Guardian

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

The Other Wes Moore

Divergent

Split

The Rescue

Everlost

The Fault in Our Stars

Mockingjay

A Wizard of Earthsea

Beautiful Creatures

The Fellowship of the Ring

Fallen Angels

I Am Seal Team Six Warrior

The House of Tomorrow

Glass

The 19th Wife

Extras

The Rules of Survival

Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have

Compound

Everlost

Silver Linings Playbook

I Hunt Killers

The Pledge

Midnighters

5th Hour

I am the Messenger

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Fault in Our Stars

Crossed

American Sniper

True Grit

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

15 Months In SOG

The Confession

Tone

Twilight

Want to Go Private?

Impulse

Spider-man

Right Behind You

Rangers Apprentice Book 6 : Siege of Macindaw

Unwholly, I Hunt Killers

The Maze Runner

Something Borrowed

Norwegian Wood

Betrayed

Rapture

The Storyteller

The Golden Spiral

Romiette and Julio

SIXTH HOUR

Hate List

The Sirens of Titan

The Slayer Chronicles

Soul Surfer

Shattered Mirror

Something Like Normal

Chain Reaction

Blood on my Hands

World War Z

The Secret History

The Future of Us

How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World

The Great Gatsby

Split

A Walk in the Woods

Speaker for the Dead

Clockwork Princess

The Book Thief

The Seven Storey Mountain

Beautiful Ruins

Stranger in a Strange Land

Destined “House of Night Series”

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I challenge even the biggest skeptic to find trash here...great YAL, popular fiction, nonfiction, classics...probably much better books than the majority of adults are currently reading. Because I know who is reading what, I could tell you stories about each book...about how book recommendations travel through a class, about how we are currently obsessed with Barry Lyga and Neil Shusterman at the moment. About my student in sixty hour who has several of us reading Murakami.

I'm proud of my students. Each book, each page, is a victory. From my intellectually-disabled student who is almost finished with the Hunger Games series, to the boy who's reading The Inferno -- for pleasure, every student is reading and growing and thinking. Every student has learned the power of the right book at the right time. 

I am in awe.